RankingsPrimerArbiterPhysicistMathematicianContrarianQESites logClaimsSourcesResearch notes

2026-10-08 Wikipedia and Wikisource (secondary, for leads and citations)

Fetched as raw wikitext with curl into research/pages/ and grepped. These are secondary sources, used here for their citations to primary works.

Pages: - Relativity priority dispute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute - Kaufmann-Bucherer-Neumann experiments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaufmann%E2%80%93Bucherer%E2%80%93Neumann_experiments - Lorentz ether theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_ether_theory - Kennedy-Thorndike experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy%E2%80%93Thorndike_experiment - Trouton-Rankine experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trouton%E2%80%93Rankine_experiment - Experiments of Rayleigh and Brace: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiments_of_Rayleigh_and_Brace - Wikisource, Einstein, "Ether and the Theory of Relativity" (Leiden, 1920): https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ether_and_the_Theory_of_Relativity

Findings

  1. Lorentz at the 1927 Mount Wilson conference (claim 6; priority 1). The page quotes Lorentz, from "Conference on the Michelson-Morley Experiment", ApJ 68 (1928) 341-400, at pp.345-351 (bibcode 1928ApJ....68..341M, doi 10.1086/143148): "I considered my time transformation only as a heuristic working hypothesis. So the theory of relativity is really solely Einstein's work..." [web]. This is a later own statement that matches Note 72* [read: PDF p.330]. The primary text was not read this run: the ADS scan opened only as an image viewer (see sites.md). The quote is in English, but its wording should be checked against the ApJ scan.
  2. The same page quotes the 1916 book at book pp.230 and 321. That matches PDF pp.239 and 330 with the offset of 9 that this project uses [read]. It cites an archive.org copy of the 2nd edition: https://archive.org/details/electronstheory00lorerich [web].
  3. Experiments on the speed dependence of electron mass (claim 3; priorities 2 and 4). The page summarises Bucherer 1908, Wolz 1909, Hupka 1909/1910, Neumann 1914 and Guye-Lavanchy 1915 as agreeing with the Lorentz-Einstein formula. It also quotes Lorentz's own 1915 summary (citing "Lorentz (1915), p.339", which is book p.339 = PDF p.348, Note 86). It then reports a later dispute: "Zahn & Spees (1938) and Faragó & Jánossy (1954) argued that many assumptions employed in those early experiments ... were wrong or imprecise. As with Kaufmann's experiments, the Bucherer-Neumann experiments would only show a qualitative increase of mass, and were incapable of deciding between the competing theories." It names Rogers, McReynolds and Rogers (1940) as the first deflection experiment precise enough, and Glitscher (1917, hydrogen fine structure) as an earlier spectroscopic confirmation [web]. Primary sources to obtain: Zahn and Spees, Phys. Rev. 53 (1938) 511-521, doi 10.1103/PhysRev.53.511; Faragó and Jánossy, Nuovo Cimento 5 (1957) 379; Rogers et al. (1940), journal reference not checked ([memory, medium]: Phys. Rev. 57, 1940). These bear on how much weight the experiments that Lorentz cited in 1909 and 1915 could carry. Lorentz's statement is his own reading of the data available to him.
  4. Rayleigh and Brace (claim 4). Rayleigh (1902): a 76 cm tube of carbon bisulphide or water. Brace (1904): an apparatus 4.13 m long filled with water, much more sensitive. The page says Brace argued that Rayleigh had used the wrong size of contraction (0.5e-8 instead of 1e-8). It says Brace at first read his null result as a refutation of contraction, and that Lorentz (1904) and Larmor (1904) showed it follows when the full transformation, including the time transformation, is used [web]. This matches §§169 and 185-186 [read: pp.205, 226-229].
  5. Kennedy-Thorndike (1932) and Trouton-Rankine (1908) (claims 2 and 5). Kennedy-Thorndike used unequal interferometer arms. Contraction "by itself" cannot explain its null result, and time dilation is needed as well [web]. This is the experiment that separates claim 2 (contraction alone) from claim 5 (clocks slow by k). Trouton-Rankine (1908) looked for a contraction effect on a resistance measured in the rest frame of the apparatus and found none [web].
  6. Later Lorentz-type (preferred-frame) views (priority 3). The LET page says the "neo-Lorentzian" reading treats a preferred frame as Lorentz's immobile ether, with complete Lorentz transformations, so it is not experimentally distinguishable from SR. It names Herbert E. Ives (Ives-Stilwell time-dilation experiment) as a later advocate of a Lorentzian approach, quoting Ives that the constancy "principle ... is untenable". The page labels such views "unfounded within the mainstream scientific community"; that is the page's characterization. It also names J. S. Bell's "Lorentzian" teaching approach, the Robertson-Mansouri-Sexl test theory (which has an ether frame and parameters for contraction and dilation), and Schmelzer (2012), a proposed Lorentz-ether generalisation to gravity [web]. On Lorentz in 1913, it says Lorentz denied the contraction was ad hoc and held that it is a matter of taste which theory one prefers. The primary text of that 1913 position is quoted in 2026-10-08-internet-archive.md.
  7. Einstein, Leiden 1920 (claim 6, context). "As to the mechanical nature of the Lorentzian ether, it may be said of it, in a somewhat playful spirit, that immobility is the only mechanical property of which it has not been deprived by H. A. Lorentz." Einstein also says special relativity took from the ether "its last mechanical quality, namely, its immobility", and keeps an ether in a non-mechanical sense [web, Wikisource].